‘Mad Men’ Gets the Barbie Treatment

Posted on Mar 10, 2010

They don’t come with the full range of accessories to complement their onscreen characters—e.g., cigarettes, cocktails, someone else’s dog tags—but Mattel’s new line of “Mad Men” Barbie dolls at least includes a mistress, in the form of a plastic Joan Holloway. But Joan’s famous assets have been whittled down to almost unrecognizable Barbie-esque proportions, even though her target market isn’t exactly the sandbox set. —KA

The New York Times:

Mattel is licensing rights to the characters from Lionsgate, the studio that produces “Mad Men” for the AMC cable channel. There will be 7,000 to 10,000 copies of each doll, to be sold in specialty stores and on two Web sites, amctv.com and barbiecollector.com.

The characters to become dolls are Don Draper, the show’s leading man; his wife, Betty; his colleague at the Sterling Cooper agency, Roger Sterling; and Joan Holloway, the agency’s office manager who was Roger’s mistress.

That two dolls represent a relationship outside wedlock, and Don Draper’s propensity for adultery, may be firsts for the Barbie world since the brand’s introduction five decades ago. But for the sake of the Barbie image, her immersion in the “Mad Men” era will go only so far: The dolls come with period accessories like hats, overcoats, pearls and padded undergarments, but no cigarettes, ashtrays, martini glasses or cocktail shakers.